


Three Months

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 15:18:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3072695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There are places I’d like to go. Things I’d like to see. I want you to go with me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Months

Midorima’s stomach is all up in knots but Kise pats him on the shoulder reassuringly. “You’re just another month closer to being cured.”

Midorima clenches his jaw. “You’re jinxing it, Kise.”

“I say it every month.”

And it’s true; he does. He comes every month, going above and beyond the call of a roommate (even if they’ve known each other ten, fifteen years), and he seems to think Midorima needs someone to go with him to these doctor’s appointments even though the cancer’s in remission and even if it wasn’t it had never totally crippled him, and what if it’s bad news? Even though it hasn’t been yet, it might be, and Kise shouldn’t have to be there for that, shouldn’t be subject to that awful, soul-crushing initial state.

“Midorima-san?”

Midorima gets up; Kise looks at him pleadingly.

“Fine,” says Midorima.

* * *

Neither of them speaks much on the walk home; Kise doesn’t take his arm away from Midorima’s shoulders and Midorima’s afraid if he tries to shake him off Kise might break. This is why Midorima didn’t want to take him, why Kise shouldn’t say such ridiculously optimistic things, but Midorima can’t speak these things, won’t upset him anymore than this already has.

When they get back, Kise drifts off to his room and Midorima sits at the piano. He plays for a few hours, not quite noticing the notes or the rhythms, not even really reading the music, playing from memory until he’s several pages ahead and doesn’t really care. He’s thinking, really; giving his hands and ears something to do helps him calm down and just think. He only has three months left; he might have six if they tried treatment again but he doesn’t want to die in a hospital even though it had always been his dream to be a doctor (and that had been basically dashed anyway when the cancer came the first time) and he doesn’t want to get sicker rand weaker and drag it out if there’s no chance, anyway. Because in this situation, what is doing everything humanly possible?

He’s not aware how long it’s been since he stopped playing when Kise sits next to him on the bench. His eyes are red but he still looks beautiful, swollen face and all, and fuck it. Midorima’s got three months to live, three months to cram in as much as possible, three months to leave an impact for twenty-six plus years he’s been on earth and he’s already been too selfish but he’s been longing for Kise in his own sick way for so damn long.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Kise opens his mouth and Midorima attacks it.

He’s caught Kise off-guard at first, which is actually bad because Midorima knows he’s an awful kisser and he has no idea what to do with his tongue or his teeth so he just pulls back, gazing into Kise’s eyes—is it pity or love or confusion or something else in them? He can’t quite tell; he’s never been good at reading people.

“Midorimacchi?”

“Kise?”

He looks like he might start crying again. “What do you…want?”

Midorima nearly bites his tongue. It’s such a whimsical, open-ended Kise question and Kise usually has more tact in these kinds of situations because he pretends to be dumb but is too insightful for his own good and—what does he want, anyway? There’s really a narrow set of options that Kise could be thinking about. And there are things he’d thought about before when he was in and out of the hospital, the “if I die here and now what will I have missed” lists that had filled his brain and that he’d mentally shredded the day he was pronounced cancer-free because even if he’d made a fuss about Kise jinxing him he’d rather have gotten his old life back on track to an extent, had thought that he could put all of that off again.

“There are places I’d like to go. Things I’d like to see. I want you to go with me.”

Kise nods, tightly enough to stop the tears from escaping his eyes.

* * *

They take a plane to Sapporo, and Kise sleeps, half-falling into Midorima’s lap. Midorima’s afraid to ask if this is all a farce, if Kise feels sorry for him and is just humoring him because he’ll be rid of him in three months—but even so, Kise doesn’t have to; Kise can shuck off guilt remarkably easily and he doesn’t have to do this (he’s seen all of this before, anyway; it’s not like he’s getting anything tangible that doesn’t have to do with Midorima out of this other than escaping work for a month or so) but he’s doing it anyway and he’d whispered so earnestly that he’d loved Midorima for so long and Midorima wants so desperately to believe it—and maybe it’s only a friendship kind of love and maybe it’s cruel to try and deepen their relationship when there’s a definite time limit but Kise’s remarkably resilient (it’s one of the reasons Midorima loves him so much). The plane clears the clouds and the sunbeams shoot through the glass like lasers; Midorima moves to close the shade but Kise’s already stirring against him.

“Don’t close it,” he murmurs—Midorima can’t; the shadows of his eyelashes on his face are glorious and the subtle pinks and yellows and oranges of the sunrise match the undertones of his skin perfectly.

* * *

They get used to being on a first-name basis pretty quickly (well, perhaps not quickly in the scheme of things) and waking up in each other’s arms, coffee on hotel balconies in different cities with different skylines before them rather than the same old drab set of old Tokyo buildings outside the faded kitchen curtains as they scramble to get where they need to be. It’s the kind of old-fashioned romance he used to read about, old-time authors in Paris somehow supporting themselves on what little they made from their writing to supplant their savings (and Midorima has more savings than he could dream of spending here, on this).

They rent a villa for a week but only stay a few days because there’s a piano and it’s by a lake and mostly they just lie on the pier and stare up at the sky together.

* * *

Kise cries into his shirt at night when he thinks Midorima’s not awake but he can’t sleep much anymore with every waking moment so important and the reappearance of the dull thudding in his head—the tumor’s definitely here again. His tears are awful, grating in their starkness, because he does love Midorima, because they’ve become so tangled in each other’s lives, and two weeks in Midorima decides it’s not working. He’s not doing this right if Kise still has time to cry and he still has time to lie awake at night.

* * *

They rent a car and drive down to the ocean, down the highway that runs right beside a strip of sand, and Midorima pulls the car over on the shoulder and gets out. They’re breaking a million laws but what the hell is his driver’s license even worth, anyway? He pulls Kise out and they stand on the railing, looking out at the blue-green before them, before he jumps down into the sand and kicks off his shoes. They go into the water in their clothes and it’s still early April and it’s freezing and Kise leaps on top of him and he’s sinking under the water and the waves are crashing on top of him, but it’s kind of serene like this, his elbows scraping along the sand and gravel. When he resurfaces, he laughs—it’s almost half-human, or at least it feels strange coming from his mouth like this, hopeless and unending, and soon Kise’s laughing too as they grow more and more soaked and finally drag themselves panting onto the sand, waterlogged clothing bringing them crashing to the ground and against each other, breathing heavily.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tumblr


End file.
